A DIFFERENT PLACE, WITH A DIFFERENT PAST

REFLECTIONS on Iran and our foreign policy. Teheran is in another dimension of time There is more in this than merely an observation that Ayatollah Khomeini seems a medieval figure. He acts in dimensions that are closed to us. Tells about the seizure of the Great Mosque in Mecca on Nov. 20 by a young prophet attempting to impose himself as the "expected Mahdi", the inspired leader with a mission. This event demonstrates a continuing puritan reaction against Westernizing changes in Saudi Arabia... We Americans are progressives. Time, for us, marches on to conclusions. This belief is religious in origin. In other religious cultures life is not seen as progressive & linear. We feel that education and progress will solve the problem this presents We choose to call the Third World states "new nations" But they are actually much older than Western nations & exist on a different plane. The societies of Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Turkey, India, Afghanistan, Burma, Cambodia, China are radically different from Western societies today. They are in a different place & have a different future. In the Third World the U.S. has financed industrialization & social changes to make them more like American society. There is an alternative policy in maintaining a larger distance, a greater detachment, with respect to the changes taking place in these countries. We might conduct ourselves with more discretion before the cultural chasm separating the U.S. from a country like Iran. The U.S. did not need to make itself the agressive agent of change for contemporary Iran. Because we did we are now being held responsible by the Ayatollah for "thousands of years" of oppression.

Growing up in an apocalyptic cult wasn’t nearly as hard as leaving it.

As the years passed, Tom grew more entrenched in his homelessness. He was absorbed in lofty fantasies and private missions, aware of the basest necessities and the most transcendent abstractions, and almost nothing in between.